This week’s topic is sensation and perception, which we all take for granted. For those who have all of their senses, the senses seem like such mediocre things, until they are lost or can be lost. Of course, when someone doesn’t have one of their senses, they appreciate their other senses more, but what happens when you do have all of your senses, but they aren’t the same as other’s senses? What many see as such simple things like numbers and words people with synesthesia see in a whole different light. Synesthesia is when someone the senses get mixed together, an example of this is when people can hear colors. Many people just associate this phenomena with going on a drug induced “trip,” but there are few that experience this on a daily basis. In a Ted Talk given by Daniel Tammet, an Autistic savant, he explains his own experiences with this phenomena, which he lives with. At first, I didn’t know what to think of this condition, because it’s hard to think of someone hearing colors or seeing sounds. But, Tammet makes the experience seem more realistic because he pulls up pictures of how he associates numbers with different pictures, and his creations with numbers as colors. Even though it still is hard to picture, his pictures made the idea seem less crazy. I don’t know how someone could live with it, because even though it may seem cool, it would feel very lonely seeing the world in a very different way than everyone else.

After watching the NOVA video on how our brains respond to magic tricks and how magic tricks work, I found it fascinating that even with the slightest movement to cause a distraction, our brains automatically follow it even though I kept telling myself to try and watch the other hand.  For me personally, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it even after a couple of times!  I could only imagine what the difficulties would be for someone on the autism spectrum must have when it comes to multiple stimuli in everyday lives that we have become so accustomed to sorting through and dealing with.  Just like at the end of the magic trick when the outcome is revealed (such as a dove flying out of a bouquet of flowers), a person on the autism spectrum is in this magical realm of surprise and impaired predictions for all of their life which leads them to be in a constant state of being overstimulated and shut off from the rest of the normally wired people.  I often wonder what kind of experiments would aid in the discovery of how autistic brains truly work, but unfortunately, this article from the LA Times just lead me to more questions about my own brain and how I would possibly differ from someone who has autism.  Perhaps someone on the autism spectrum doesn’t have the primal flight of fight instincts like I do, and can’t sense danger because of their “magical realm”?  Questions lead on to more questions!

In his Ted Talk titled “Different Ways of Knowing”, Daniel Tammet, explains how he perceives the world. He explains that in his mind, numbers and words have colors and shapes.

I think he made a very interesting statement at the beginning of his talk where he said, “our personal perceptions are at the heart of how we acquire knowledge”. I think this is very true. I think this could be connected to why certain things are encoded without effort or conscious awareness. Some things just naturally stand out to us and have a deeper meaning in our minds than others do. This could be due to the connections we make when we hear/see them. Tammet thinks of colors when he hears a word and while we may not see a color when we hear a word, we most likely think of something else that influences how we perceive that word.

Tammet also stated that poets play with our intuitive understanding of words and sounds. This also seems very true. This is why in English classes, we are asked to interpret literature. While the author may have been feeling and portraying their specific beliefs or emotions, each person can interpret a poem differently due to the unique way they perceive words.

In regards to his daily life, Tammet did express that he was a little annoyed by people asking him all kinds of bizarre questions. He did state, however, that life is much richer when experienced in colors and shapes. I think that someone with Synesthesia, may have a deeper appreciation for language and also mathematics. We do make connection when we hear words but our experience may not be as vivid. A drawback could be that a person with synthesia may be easily distracted. They may get caught up thinking about the visual experience when they heard a word or number and stop paying attention to the rest of the sentence. This may not be a big problem, however, and those with this condition most likely live a normal life filled with vivid colors, shapes, smells, and sounds.

Daniel Tammet’s Ted Talk about sensation and perception opened my eyes to see that there are many ways of taking in our surroundings. I have never heard the word “synesthesia” before but I found it fascinating how one factor can activate another in our brains. I have always thought that one thing can have many different meanings depending on a persons perception, and this was made clear to me by observing how Tammet was able to create abstract paintings from one simple number. I would have never imagined that a person could see color or emotion behind something so insignificant to me. The way he described a shape for each number made me realize that there is lots of things that I am missing out on because I do not take the time to place meaning behind them. It was also interesting how at first, when Tammet presented his three questions I was going about my normal learning techniques to figure out the answer. After listening and seeing how synesthesia works, I was able to compute the answer to the questions in a way that strongly deviates from my normal day to day thinking process. I was fascinated how a 10 minute TED talk was able to impact for an instance the way I was processing information. I think that people who learn through this process have a highly more “active” or in a sense more vivid perception of their surroundings. Being able to make connections between things in our world makes them have more meaning ;therefore, allowing us to place more value to those things. Sometimes I go through my day thinking how boring it all has been, but if I were to see color behind numbers, to place emotion behind words, I would definitely take in more about the world around me than I usually do.

Everyone has different perceptions of how people see the world in their own way. Some people have the skills to use multiple senses to understand something.In TED talks Daniel Tammet explains how he uses synesthesia. Synesthesia is the production of a sense being stimulated by another sense causing multiple functions to help understand what is happening in a situation.For example,  when a person is blind they use their touch and hearing senses to be able to walk around in the environment or a person could combine  numbers with colors to understand what they see.I thought synesthesia was some kind of disease before I saw TED talks but its just a condition of how people see life in their own way.

Synesthesia is a condition not everyone has but there are people in this world who do have it. I didn’t know about synesthesia or what it was until I watched the video which provided me with information explaining how the perception of human beings is different. I believe that people dealing with this condition can understand what others don’t. They can see things that other people don’t see because of synesthesia but if the person doesn’t understand what is happening he or she could be dealing with difficulties to understand.Perception is the way we see the world and how we understand it.

Do you have any idea what synesthesia is? Synesthesia is a condition that many people have that occurs when one sense, such as sound, triggers another sense, like taste, at the same time. People with this condition view and learn things differently than other people who do not have it. Today, I watched a TED Talk titled “Different Ways of Knowing” in which Daniel Tammet, an author, talks about his experience of synesthesia; as well as how he and other individuals with synesthesia may sense and perceive different sensations in certain situations. Daniel Tammet mainly discussed how he personally visualizes, learns, and perceives some images, writings, and problems; however, all people with synesthesia are not affected the same way. By this I mean, when one sense such as sound is triggered for two different people with synesthesia, one person’s sense of taste may be triggered, while the other person’s sense of smell may be triggered instead.

I have heard of synesthesia once before, but it was not explained as in depth as it was in this video. This TED Talk enlightened and confused me. This video enlightened me because I now have a better understanding of individuals who have synesthesia than I did before.  This video confused me because Daniel Tammet clarified how he saw and understood things, but even afterwards it still sounds complicated to me.

Before today, I thought synesthesia would make day to day life more complicated, but after watching this entire video, it makes me think that day to day life would not be as hard as I make it out to be. I am pretty sure there would still be some obstacles because people with synesthesia still view and perceive things differently than the majority of the people in the world; however, those people still work, do the same the tasks, and live life like every other person.

In 2011 Icelandic author Daniel Tammet gave a TED Talk about perception and how it shapes our knowledge of the world. He elaborates on this point by describing his experiences with synesthesia, a condition I also have.

What is Synesthesia?

Synesthesia is defined as a “neurological phenomenon” in which two senses are irrationally, but consistently, coupled. Although this linkage can be just about any combination of the senses, the two most common are color-grapheme and color-auditory synesthesia. In the former, a synesthete perceives letters and numbers as being written in a certain color or pattern. In the latter, sounds illicit a visual cue, usually taking the form of colored light. The location of these phenomena vary. One synesthete may report them occurring in her actual visual field while another describes them as being more within the mind’s eye (Gross, n.d.).

My form is a fairly rare one. Whenever I listen to someone speak or sing words, I “feel” them somewhere in my head or have the urge to produce their movement. Honestly, the best description I can give isn’t even a description but a demonstration. Kinetic typography is a type of animation that puts words into motion like in these videos… So imagine that but “felt.” I can only  “see” them if I focus hard enough.

Surprisingly, synesthesia is a very real condition with a defined biological cause. For instance, fMRIs demonstrate a difference in synesthetic and non-synesthetic brains: when exposed to a triggering stimulus, a synesthete’s brain will activate in areas correlated to their coupled senses (Rossengarten, n.d.). Dr. Richard Cytowic (2013) claims this to be the result of “hyper connecting neurons” between the two areas. Interestingly, there appears to be a genetic component to the condition since many synesthetes report having similarly affected relatives. Makes me wonder if any of my relatives have it.

Still, synesthesia is not considered a disorder since it does not adversely affect the individual to any great degree. In fact, it’s common for a synesthete to not realize until later in life his perception of the world is any different. (I didn’t know most people didn’t have personalities assigned to some numbers–related to synesthesia– until a few years ago.)

This returns to ideas brought up by Tammet.  Perception is a completely individualized endeavor; therefore, we all have different ways of seeing situations and acquiring knowledge from them. According to Cytowic, this works as a great advantage for a synesthete’s creativity since he would be able to extract very unique metaphors from her surroundings–evident in Tammet’s video, where he demonstrates his  way of viewing multiplication and is able to abstractly connect the word “hare” to something fragile in a Keats’ poem. I found this so cool. Never in my life had I considered the potential for inventing new methods of learning via synesthesia since I’m so used to my type just getting in the way. (Upon further reflection, this is actually how I piece together sentences: by using my synesthesia to feel out how things ought to sound or to make some weird, convoluted lyrical twists.)

Speaking of… What’s It Like Living With Synesthesia?

Living with synesthesia is extremely frustrating to articulate because it’s nearly an existential experience, but it’s honestly not that big of a deal. If you’ve always traveled through the world a certain way, that’s just how it is. You kind of get used to it, you know? It can even be a sort of nifty party trick. I, for example, have fun telling people what their voices “feel” like. If I had anything negative to say, it’d be that it gets annoying to write when the words I want to type don’t quite line up with how I think they should be moving. Punctuation, especially, is idiotic. I should be able to use them wherever, whenever, or never, just because that’s how it sounds like it should feel. Conjunctions besides “and” are also so… choppy.

My case is pretty moderate though. It exists in my mind’s eye and is really more of a weird bodily sensation than anything else; however, a lot of synesthetes like Youtuber Ariel have more extreme forms. In her video“Living With Synesthesia”, she describes her life with color-grapheme and spatial sequence synesthesia, revealing that the latter especially causes anxiety because it causes a hyperawareness of her location. For instance, while on vacation, she was constantly reminded where she was–not very fun if you’re just trying to relax. Additionally, since she sees the weekdays on a map in front of her, and they have personalities/colors of their own, some days are just automatically predisposed to being “bad.” I found this one most horrific though: since her color-grapheme synesthesia only has an index up to about 30, she’s terrified of ever aging past that. It’s a void. Pretty freaky.

References and Validity

Rossengarten, R. (n.d.). FMRI Scans: Synesthesia is Real. Retrieved March 31, 2016, from http://neurologues.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/fmri-scans-synesthesia-is-real/

• Validity: If you look further into the website, you discover that the author of these posts are college students. I think it’s actually an assignment a lot like this one. However, I decided to trust it because a) most students can summarize a report pretty well, and b) the facts provided here were also mentioned by Gross.

I was really intrigued by the first video I watched. I’ve always been curious about magic and how exactly magicians are able to pull off the tricks they do. I’m definitely one of those people that try extremely hard to figure out how the tricks are done, but usually to no avail. It seems like no matter how hard I pay attention, I still can’t figure them out. So it was interesting to me to learn that our brains can be tricked by something seemingly as simple as curving your hand upwards and that even a person’s face can be distracting enough for a trick to be pulled on you. While I was watching the video, I literally had to fight every instinct in me to watch the magician’s other hand in order to see through the trick. The second video made perfect sense. After watching the first one and seeing how they deceive us, I used what little knowledge I had about autism to sort of guess why they are able to see through the illusions. I found the article interesting as well. It seemed to follow along with the second video in the way that it talks about impaired prediction leading to anxiety. If you are unable follow social cues like the video mentions, then it could be hard to predict when something is about to happen which can create anxiety. For example, when you’re talking to someone and they look behind you at another person walking up, you can turn and see that they are coming but if the person you are speaking to does nothing, the person walking up could give you a scare. This obviously doesn’t cover all of the issues people with autism deal with, but it could definitely be a small portion of it. In my opinion though, I think it would be difficult to use magic to help people with autism. Just like I was going against my nature to look at the magicians other hand, I think you would have to ask people with autism to go against themselves in a way to pay close attention to the cues of the magician. So while I do think it would be hard, I wouldn’t say that it is necessarily impossible and if it could help people with autism, it’s definitely worth a try.